And heard the air-raid siren begin its unmistakable up-and-down warble.
In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.
WINSTON CHURCHILL,
VE-Day, 8 May 1945
London—7 May 1945
“DOUGLAS, THE DOOR’S CLOSING!” PAIGE SHOUTED FROM the platform.
“Hurry!” Reardon urged. “The train will leave—”
“I know,” she said, attempting to squeeze past the two Home Guards who were still singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” And forming a solid wall. She tried to go around, but dozens of people were trying to board the car and pushing her back away from the door. She shoved her way back to it.
The door was sliding shut. If she didn’t get off now, she’d lose them and never be able to find them again in these crowds of merrymakers. “Please, this is my stop!” she said, eeling her way between two very tipsy sailors to the door. There was scarcely enough room to slip through. She braced the door open with both elbows.
“Mind the gap, Douglas!” Paige shouted and held out her hand.
She grabbed for it and half stepped, half jumped off the train, and before her feet even touched the platform, the train was moving, disappearing into the tunnel.
“Thank goodness!” Paige said. “We were afraid we’d never see you again.”
You wouldn’t have, she thought.
“This way!” Reardon called gaily and started along the platform toward the exit, but the platform was just as jammed as the train had been. It took them a quarter of an hour to get off it and through the tunnel to the escalators, where things were no better. People were blowing tin whistles, cheering, leaning over the top throwing confetti on them as they rode up, and somewhere someone was banging on a bass drum.
Reardon, five steps above her, leaned back down to shout, “Before we get outside, we’d best settle on a meeting place! In case we get separated!”
“I thought we said Trafalgar Square,” Paige shouted.
“We did,” Reardon shouted, “but where in Trafalgar Square?”
“The lions?” Paige suggested. “What do you think, Douglas?”
That won’t work, Douglas thought. There are four lions and they’re right in the middle of the square, which will be jammed with thousands of people. Not only will we not be able to find the correct lion, but we won’t be able to see anything from there if we do.
They needed an elevated vantage point they could see the others from. “The National Gallery steps!” she shouted up to them.
Reardon nodded. “The National Gallery steps.”
“When?” Paige asked.
“Midnight,” Reardon said.
No, she thought. If I decide I need to go tonight, I’ll have to be there by midnight, and it will take me the better part of an hour to get there. “We can’t meet at midnight!” she shouted, but her voice was drowned out by a schoolboy on the step above her blowing enthusiastically on a toy horn.
“The National Gallery steps at midnight,” Paige echoed. “Or we turn into pumpkins.”
“No, Paige!” she called. “We need to meet before—”
But Reardon, thank goodness, was already saying, “That won’t work. The Underground only runs till half past eleven tonight, and the Major will have our heads if we don’t make it back.”
Half past eleven. That meant she’d need to start for the drop even earlier.
“But we only just got here,” Paige said, “and the war’s over—”
“We haven’t been demobbed yet,” Reardon said. “Till we are—”
“I suppose you’re right,” Paige agreed.
“Then we meet on the National Gallery steps at a quarter past eleven, agreed? Douglas?”
No, she thought. I may need to be gone before that, and I don’t want you waiting for me and ending up being late getting back.
She needed to tell them to go on without her if she wasn’t there. “No, wait!” she called, but Reardon was already to the top of the escalator and stepping off into an even larger crowd. She turned back to say, “Follow me, girls,” and disappeared into the mêlée.
“Wait! Reardon! Paige!” Douglas called, pushing up the moving stairs to catch Paige, but the boy with the horn was blocking her way. By the time she reached the top of the escalator, Reardon was nowhere to be seen, and Paige was already nearly to the turnstiles. “Paige!” she called again, and started after her.
Paige turned back.
“Wait for me!” Douglas called, and Paige nodded and made an effort to move to the side but was swept on through.
“Douglas!” Paige shouted and pointed to the stairs leading up to the street.
She nodded and started that way, but by the time she reached Paige, she was halfway up the steps and clinging madly to the metal railing. “Douglas, can you see Reardon anywhere?” Paige shouted down to her.
“No!” she called, bracing herself against the noisy, laughing crowd, which was carrying them inexorably up the stairs to the street. “Listen, if one of us isn’t there on the steps when it’s time to leave, the others shouldn’t wait!”
“What did you say?” Paige shouted over the din, which was growing even louder. Just above them a man in a bowler shouted, “Three cheers for Churchill!” and the crowd obligingly bellowed, “Hip hip hurrah! Hip hip hurrah! Hip hip hurrah!”
“I said, don’t wait for me!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“Three cheers for Monty!” the man shouted. “Hip hip—”
The cheering crowd pushed them up out of the stairway, rather like a cork from a bottle, and spewed them out onto the packed street. And into an even louder din.
Horns were honking and bells were ringing. A conga line snaked past, chanting, “Dunh duh dunh duh dunh UNH!”
Douglas pushed up to Paige and grabbed her arm. “I said, don’t—”
“I can’t hear a word you’re saying, Doug—” Paige said, and stopped short. “Oh, my goodness!”
The crowd crashed into them, around them, past them, creating a sort of eddy, but Paige was oblivious. She was standing with her hands clasped to her chest and a look of awe. “Oh, look, the lights!”
Electric lights shone from shops and the marquee of a cinema and the stained-glass windows of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The pedestal of Nelson’s monument was lit, and so were the lions and the fountain. “Aren’t they the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen?” Paige sighed.
They were beautiful, though not nearly as wonderful to her as they must be to the contemps, who’d lived through five years of the blackout. “Yes,” she said, looking over at Trafalgar Square.
St. Martin’s pillars were draped in bunting, and on its porch stood a little girl waving a glittering white sparkler. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, and a giant bonfire was burning on the far side of the square. Two months ago—two weeks ago—that fire would have meant fear and death and destruction to these same Londoners. But it no longer held any terror for them. They danced around it, and the sudden drone of a plane overhead brought cheers and hands raised in the V-for-victory sign.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Paige asked.
“Yes!” she said, shouting into Paige’s ear. “But listen, if I’m not on the steps at a quarter past eleven, don’t wait for me.”
But Paige wasn’t paying any attention. “It’s just like the song,” she said, transfixed, and began to sing, “ ‘When the lights go on again all over the world …’ ”